“Yes. Yes, I will definitely narrow it down. Thank you so much, Dr.—”
“Very good, dear. I must go, but we’ll talk soon. Make sure you review Crito. It’s fundamental, I know, but you must start with your basics and build from there.”
“Yes, yes… Of course I will.”
“We’ll talk soon.” And then the line clicked dead even as I opened my mouth to thank her once more.
“Okay,” I said under my breath. “That was… Well…” I looked around, wondering for a moment where I was, and when I glanced in front of me, it was the physical education building I was looking at. “Shit,” I muttered. I’d missed my turn.
By the time I made it to the Academic Center, I was five minutes late, and when I pushed through the door into the lecture hall, every eyeball in every head turned to stare at me.
I cleared my throat as I walked toward the front of the room, and the eyes followed my every move. They roved, and I could feel them walking and crawling over my skin, judging, appraising. I ignored it, feeling my cheeks flush but refusing to react to my nerves.
“Good evening, class,” I said as I finally stepped up to the large desk that sat in the center of the vast room with its tall ceilings and cavernous echo. “I’m Helene Hess, and this is Philosophy 101. I’m an assistant professor here at Penn State Hazleton. I’m in the process of finishing up my dissertation for my Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania—”
“Ivy League…” a young man sitting near the front said. “Impressive.”
I stared at him for a moment. “Is it?” I asked blandly. “As I was saying, I’ll be your instructor for this course. We will be meeting every Wednesday evening from five to eight in this lecture hall.”
I spent the next thirty minutes reviewing the syllabus, and every time I mentioned an assignment or a test, the group of thirty or so supposed adults broke out into a chorus of groans. And when I mentioned the term paper that students would be required to write, you’d have thought I’d sentenced them to a life of hard labor.
Nearly half of the class was missing their textbooks, because apparently knowing what the text would be a month prior wasn’t long enough for anyone to actually find the textbook … at the campus bookstore that would literally find the book for them if they cared to ask. The majority of students who did have their books were the adults—the real adults. There were always plenty of those in an evening class, and I’d decided they were literally the only thing that could save my faith in collegiate education.
“I heard the bookstore was out of a lot of textbooks,” the same young male student who was impressed with my Ivy League education said as he lounged back in his chair as though it were a recliner.
“Is that so?” I asked, not the least bit amused. “And are they out of this textbook?” I asked, holding my copy up.
He shrugged.
“Amazon?” I asked. “Barnes & Noble, eBay … to name a few. All good examples of places you can actually buy a book.”
The number of shrugs that were returned to that comment was countless.
This was my second semester teaching an evening course at Penn State Hazleton, the first being the summer semester directly preceding this one. And I’d TA’d during my years of graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There was one thing I’d determined over those many semesters and countless students… Freshman … strike that, undergraduates in general were no more mature than the average high schooler. Less so by all accounts thanks to the fact the one source of discipline—parents—was no longer a going concern in their lives.
A masculine looking hand rose from near the back of the room, and as I took a deep breath, tempering my irritation, I pointed toward the student. “Yes, you in the back. And please tell me you haven’t also failed to show up to my class prepared.”
The student’s hand dropped, and I started to roll my eyes, but then the hand rose again, clasping the textbook in his hand.
I smiled.
“Can you stand, please?” The problem with large lecture halls without leveled seating was they didn’t offer the same convenient eye line. I missed that about the University of Pennsylvania. Penn State Hazleton was a smaller satellite school located in Hazleton, Pennsylvania that was part of Penn State University. It was a good school, small, but adequate. It did, however, lack some of the conveniences I was used to at my larger, and frankly, more prestigious university.
The man stood, and as he did, every head in the room craned around to see him.
“How are you, Hell?” he asked.
A shudder ran through my body, traveling from one nerve ending to another as I gaped at him, and when my breath left me in a rush it was audible.